ELEVATION by Stephen King

We have reached the point where anything that Stephen King writes will be published. I generally don't have a problem with that, but this 'novella' is a thin tome with what looks suspiciously like double spacing. If it took me two hours to read then I'm surprised.

It also felt like some reheated old ideas thrown together. The central conceit of Thinner was a man who got thinner no matter what he did. The central conceit here is that a man is getting lighter no matter what he does. Gravity is losing its hold. Does this cause anyone great concern? No not really.

The main concern is that there's a married lesbian couple running a restaurant and people don't approve. The local seasonal running race should take care of that. Really? In Trump's America, one photograph is all it takes to change conservative views?

It is a slight tale that doesn't last long or think deep, both of which are surprising for King.

That said, the man does know how to write and you breeze through it pleasurably enough, though by the end of the this snack you're left far from satisfied.

At the centre of the universe, on the planet Midworld, lies the Dark Tower. It alone keeps the darkness and the monsters from invading all of the worlds in known space. The Man in Black, evils sorceror Walter, wants to destroy the tower, allowing the demons in and harnessing them to make him ruler of everything. To this end, he is kidnapping children from Earth who have mental powers known as 'shining'. These powers can be harnessed to destroy the tower, but the latest unwilling recruit falls into the hands of Roland Deschain, the last of the noble gunfighters and a man who has dedicated his life to killing the Man in Black.

THE DARK TOWER is Stephen King's magnum opus, a tale that spans several volumes and tries to combine many of his earlier works into some sort of cohesive narrative. The King Cinematic Universe, if you will. Considering the scope and scale of the source material, it was never going to be easy to pare it down into something that would satisfy as a single movie. An epic TV series would have been much more like it. However, what we have is the movie and it has been a long, hard road getting to the point where there is something on the screen bearing the name THE DARK TOWER.

Before we go any further, it is worth pointing out that the film is not bad. It's not going to rock anyone's universe, but it is far from the train wreck that some reviews would have you believe. Of course, if you are invested in the source works then having it all squashed down into this one film, and with only a 95 minute running time at that, would probably have been unacceptable no matter how good it was. That it is entertaining enough without ever being anything even remotely special was never going to be good enough. There is quite clearly a whole heap of backstory that a single flashback to a previous meeting between Roland and Walter cannot ever hope to cover.

Idris Elba is perfect casting as gunslinger Roland, being immediately tough, laconic and honourable without having to do anything to prove those things. His presence immediately screams 'hero' whilst the script tries to make him a flawed and reluctant one, without much success. Ranged against him is Matthew McConaughey's Walter, a magician who wouldn't be out of place on a Vegas stage, but who gets to do some nasty stuff to people along the way. Considering the power that he has, it is hard to see why he keeps sending incompetent underlings to do the things that he could achieve easily. The fact that his power is so immense makes the climactic showdown between the two somewhat anticlimactic, despite Roland's assault on his New York stronghold being filled with some pretty good action licks. In fact, whenever Roland gets the guns out, the film improves immensely.

Despite coming originally from the pen of Stephen King, there is relatively little horror on show. A couple of CGI demons are dealt with fairly quickly, Walter's army are rat creatures that wear ill-fitting human skins and the wizard doesn't mind torturing kids to destroy the tower that stands in his way, but this film is more interested in being a fantasy actioner. There are some vaguely amusing fish out of water antics when Roland crosses over to modern day New York from a post-apocalypse Midworld and Elba manages these with perfect timing, but there is a plot to get through and character development takes a big back seat to that. The rivalry and hatred between Roland and Walter is barely explored, so much of the impact is lost.

The film looks good and the direction is straightforward enough not to get in the way, but it also adds nothing in the way of visual excitement. A few sly references to other King works (Oh, there's It or Christine) won't cut it.

Sure to disappoint King fans and especially fans of his longest work, THE DARK TOWER is an OK time passer that never quite rises to the challenge of what it ought to have been.

STEPHEN KING FILMS FAQ by Scott Von Doviak

Stephen King is one of the great storytellers of our age, hell of any age if it comes to that. It is therefore a strange thing that movie and TV adaptations of his books more often than not fall well short of, well, not sucking.

 

This book is a comprehensive look at all things screen when it comes to taking the printed words and, more often than not, ignoring the hell out of them. Every production you can think of (and a whole bunch you couldn't and will wish you hadn't found out about) can be found inside the covers here.

 

First of all, let's deal with the title. STEPHEN KING FILMS FAQ suggests a certain format, but it's not like that at all. There are no list of questions being answered, frequently asked or otherwise. And then there is the matter of the subtitle 'All that's left to know about the king of horror on film'. Well, that forgets about the whole chunks devoted to videotape productions and I'm curious to know what it means by 'all that's left to know'. All that's left to know after what?

 

Let's deal with the good stuff first. Scott Van Doviak knows his Stephen King adaptations. What it may lack in surgical detail it makes up for in the sheer breadth of its scope. Whilst books could be written (and have been) about the troubled making of Kubrick's THE SHINING, it gets a single chapter before we head on to the next one. There is so much ground to cover that we don't get to dig too deeply at any point.

 

Von Doviak's tone is light and pleasant and the book itself is a very easy read, almost a page turner. It's very easy to settle down to a quick sample and find that three or four chapters have gone past. The layout is clear, going through celluloid examples chronologically before then moving onto the televisual delights on offer. It starts to run out of steam toward the end, however, but that's because we're on to the odds and sods such as THE SIMPSONS pastiches and films inspired by Stephen King.

 

Curiously, Von Doviak doesn't really seem to like many of the films and shows on offer. He certainly spends more time waxing rhapsodic about what's wrong with each of them than what's great. Then again, we all do that.

 

Despite the fact that it's 'all that's left to know', I doubt that there is that much in there that the King devotee didn't already know. The more obscure outings might be useful for the King completist, however. For the person just getting into the visualisation of Stephen King's books, however, there is a wealth of stuff to choose from. Is THE STAND miniseries as good as the book? How did THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION move from a short story to a long masterpiece? Is the Stephen King scripted THE SHINING better than the Kubrick version?

 

It's all here.

 

As someone who's liked and hated his fair share of King's books and films, but is far from being an expert, I found this an enjoyable, easy read, though I was possibly not all that more well-informed at the end of it.